At the last minute, I pick up Julie’s advent calendar. I open the first window to reveal a tiny ‘Letter to Santa’. Ironic. Dad’s letter came with the major implication that I am on the naughty list, for being quite so difficult to find. Thanks to him, I’ve now got no idea where I’ll be by the time the rest of the cheap, glittery card windows are open.
I shouldn’t bring the advent calendar. It serves no purpose.
I pack it in my bag.
Thirty minutes’ brisk walk gets me to the station. I need to think ahead, that’s one of the Rules: think how this will look to anyone trying to find me. I buy two tickets, exactly as set out in my emergency plan. First, I get a single to Cardiff from the bored man at the counter, using my bank card. Julie knows about my bank account – she helped me set it up. I make a meal of it, spending ages looking for my purse, asking inane questions about things to visit there so that he’s more likely to remember me. I buy a second ticket for Edinburgh from the machine out of sight of the counter, feeding notes carefully into the slot. My dad came to think all state authorities were out to get him, tracking his movements, prying into his finances and his irregular immigration status. So I’m well trained in concealing my data trail. Or laying a fake one.
I wait for the train in the ladies’ toilets, away from any platform cameras. I dive into a cubicle when a woman enters – and then tell myself not to be so jumpy, to pull myself together, not to draw attention. No one is coming to take me back to school. As my train finally pulls in to the platform, I merge with other passengers and hop on, hood up. I change platforms at Bath, tagging along behind a noisy group of tourists and their wheelie cases.
Pulling into London past midnight, I spend hours drifting between rundown 24-hour fast-food places to keep warm while I wait for the first train north. I don’t use a bank card, just cash, and only if I’m getting the evils from the staff and have to buy something to stop them kicking me out into the cold. This cash has to last me. I drink fizzy drinks and strong coffee to stay awake to keep an eye on my stuff.
It’s easier to do all this if you’ve trained your whole life for it. But I need to add a new worst-case scenario to the list of emergency events we planned for – not one Dad ever mentioned. Running from him.
The Scouts have a similar rule, but their motto Be Prepared is more about cake sales than hardcore survivalist plans. They are a lightweight organization compared to us. Our Rule was about being prepared for the very worst that life can throw at you. Prepared. Not scared. Other kids in Year 3 could list dinosaurs or football players. I could rattle off SHTF scenarios. That’s Shit Hits the Fan to the uninitiated. Turns out, it wasn’t a topic wholly suitable for show-and-tell.
First, the bad language got me into trouble, with or without an acronym. Then the Shit really did Hit the Fan.
It was my go right after Charlotte, who talked about her rabbit, which was unfortunate timing. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that Charlotte’s rabbit would be put straight into a casserole if the shit hit. Maybe I shouldn’t have opened up my Swiss Army knife to demonstrate how I would skin Charlotte’s rabbit. You see, Dad and I were preparing for many things:
War
Civil unrest
Chemical explosion
Fuel shortages
We were preppers. Survivalists. People prepared to do what it took to survive. To sacrifice the odd pet rabbit.
Bio-terrorism
Forest fires
Water contamination
Banking system collapse
Giant solar flares
I was proud of my dad then. I thought he was so much smarter than everyone else’s father because he knew all about how we’d survive while the world was ending around us.
Flooding
Cyber attack
Power outage
Asteroid strike
At that time, when I was in junior school, Dad came and left our lives as he wished. Probably running back to the US to sponge some more money off his mom in Ohio. The grandma I never met. I imagined her baking cookies and apple pies in a wooden house with a wide porch and a swing. The reality was probably rather different. She did raise my dad after all.
Spanish flu
Bird flu
Swine flu
Of course, I was an idiot. No excuses. I thought one day Dad would take us with him back to the States to meet my cookie-baking grandma and we’d live next to Disneyland, maybe in Disneyland, in the Sleeping Beauty castle and every day would be perfect. So why wouldn’t I show off my Grab-and-Go Bag and recite the list of impending disasters I’d learned from him?
Pandemic
Ebola
Post-antibiotic resistance
Civil unrest
My teacher was pulling nervously at her collar. Her liberal belief in free expression was grappling with the need to avoid lifelong trauma for a bunch of seven-year-olds. Not to mention the letters of complaint. A red flush slowly spread from her chest up her neck and across her cheeks until finally she tried to intervene.
Earthquake
Tsunami
Alien invasion
Electromagnetic pulse
As I got older, I came to see that Dad wanted something bad to happen. So that he’d be proved right. The guys down the pub who laughed at him for spending his money on a gas mask would suffocate to death before his very eyes. All his paranoid fantasies would be vindicated. So what if most people would be doomed? We’d be sitting in a cabin in the woods eating pickles and canned fish, Dad grinning from ear to ear and saying, “I told you so.”
Though by then he would probably only have communicated in giant, angry capital letters: I TOLD YOU SO.
Crop failure
Nuclear war
Drought
Zombie apocalypse
You might think that only a complete psychopath would want an actual emergency, a real disaster. And you’d be right.
I was never going to get the train all the way to Edinburgh, of course. I sleep in the safety of my train seat against the window and set my alarm for three hours, my arms wrapped round my bag. I get off at Newcastle, helping a family with their buggy like I’m the big sister. They offer me a lift in their taxi and I take it, rammed in the back of a mini cab that reeks of air freshener. The toddler leans against me, head nodding and dribbling down my coat. I tell them I’m a student at the uni and they drop me at my ‘house share’. I stand waving at the gate of a random house until the cab turns the corner, heave my bag on to my back and stride off towards the main road.
Going to the Bowling Plaza feels like weeks ago but it was less than twenty-four hours. I’m queasy and shaky from lack of sleep and treat myself to a bacon sandwich at a shabby café with no CCTV. I’m being overcautious but hey, I can’t help myself. It’s ingrained. Mental attitude is what distinguishes a survivor. Self-reliance, doing what you have to do on little sleep. I have to stay switched on until I reach the safety of Phil and Sue’s place.
I cadge a lift further towards The Haven with a Latvian lorry driver who’s only passing through. Perfect. He listens to heavy metal music, not the local radio stations. He’ll be long gone before anyone starts looking for me. If they even bother. It took social services six months to find some of my paperwork once, so I expect they’ll be behind the curve in tracking me down. The police won’t be interested. I’m nearly an adult, voluntarily going walkabout for a while. No big deal.
Dad is a different matter. I’ve avoided him successfully for more than two years. I let myself believe that he’d gone for good. I should have known that with Dad, it’s never over.
The lorry driver drops me at a layby on the A1. I check my map and choose to walk the last three miles, dodging out of sight if a car passes. I don’t want a lift from a chatty local. The rucksack is tight and heavy on my back. I’m obsessive about making sure nothing rattles. That no one ever hears me coming.
Bamburgh is quiet and bleak out of season. Last time I was here it was the school holidays. We walked along th
e coast, visited the castle, ate fish and chips. I gave Phil and Sue a hard time but I guess they were all right. They’ll have a new batch of kids now, crammed in the bunk beds in the back bedrooms down in Somerset.
I take the turning down Beach Lane. Two cats scrap on the road over a torn rubbish bag. The Haven is the last place on the right. It’s a bungalow with grey pebble-dashed walls and a paved front garden, weeds thriving in the cracks around pots of dead plants. It’s not exactly a cutesy holiday home but they’d rent it sometimes in the summer to friends who’d left it too late to find anything good.
The house is closed up, curtains drawn, but I walk slowly round it, peering in, just to make sure. A pile of junk mail lies on the mat inside the glass porch. A key box with a pad code is tucked round by the wheelie bin. Phil was terrible at remembering passwords and PIN numbers so everything in his life was 1066 – the burglar alarm, the cash machine (useful to know, for a tenner every now and then) and the holiday cottage key box. He won’t have had the imagination to change it, I’m certain. There’s nothing worth nicking here anyway. It belonged to his dead mum and is still full of brown old-lady furniture.
I tap in 1066 and the box clicks open. The keyring says ‘World’s Best Husband’. Phil and Sue were into all that schmaltzy stuff – Valentine bears and greetings cards. As though all the love stuff would rub off on the rest of the household – damaged kids like me who scowled at them across the kitchen table. It didn’t.
The key’s shiny, newly cut, and I fiddle with it in the lock before it works. I step over the post and head for the kitchen at the back. Even once I’ve pulled up the blind, the room is still dingy. I switch on the lights – a fluorescent strip blinking on, dead flies silhouetted in the casing. It’s musty, except for the overpowering diffuser by the door – a smell like disinfectant lemons. I turn on the heating and open the windows to let out the stale air. It doesn’t take me long to check all the rooms. The cottage is much smaller and tattier than I remember. I guess places seem bigger on sunny days, better when you’re on an actual holiday rather than just finding somewhere to lie low.
I fantasize occasionally that I can escape the past, that I can change my identity, shed my old skin and emerge as a different person. But it’s just a fantasy. That kind of change isn’t easy. I prop up the advent calendar on a shelf in the kitchen and open the second door. A sprig of holly. Prickly like me. Maybe that could be a new identity: Holly. I’d fit right in with the Millie, Molly, Izzy brigade at school.
I finally sit down, exhausted and shaky. The Haven is as safe a house as I can make it. The adrenaline’s beginning to drain away. I’m in a place I hoped I’d never have to use and I don’t know how long I’ll be here. My emergency plan doesn’t help. I wrote ‘until I know it’s safe to return to Beechwood’ – but what if it never is? What then? I’m meant to stay one step ahead. That’s the Rule. I guess I’m out of practice.
I need to keep my strength up. Sue always kept basic supplies up here and I help myself to a lunch of canned vegetable soup and rice pudding, warming them in the dented saucepan on the hob, before my head starts to nod and I drag myself upstairs to crash out for a few hours in the half-remembered back bedroom.
Loud music woke me up. I cautiously padded into the lounge, pulling on a jumper. Mum was kneeling by the wall of Rules with a bucket of water and a scrubbing brush. I dimly recognized the music from when I was little – from a time when it was just me and Mum and she used to scoop me up and dance around the kitchen with music on full blast. She’d make up a reason for a party:
It’s Friday.
It’s a ‘let’s finish tidying up’ party.
It’s an ‘I’ve been paid today’ party.
I didn’t really care about why. I just loved that we were dancing in the kitchen and that Mum was making popcorn in the big saucepan. The kernels fired against the metal lid in a series of pops as the oil heated up. She shook the saucepan from time to time to stop it sticking and then she’d lift the lid to reveal overflowing fluffy popcorn. To a five-year-old it was magic. She divided out the popcorn between the two of us and scattered icing sugar through a tiny sieve, like a snowstorm. I’d lick my fingers and wipe them round the empty dish to pick up the last sweet dregs.
But there was no smell of popcorn now. No party. Just blaring music and a sobbing woman. A snippet of music from a decade ago couldn’t get us back there, away from this.
Away from him.
Mum’s face was red and blotchy from crying. A bruise on her left cheekbone spread up towards her eye. Her tears were streaking through the foundation she’d plastered on to cover it.
“Let’s get rid of it all, Amber. Let’s rub the Rules away and everything will be all right, won’t it?”
She scrubbed at the board, water dripping down her arm and on to the carpet, the words blurring and mixing into a mess of smeary white clouds across the wall. Dad shouted from upstairs about the noise. His heavy steps began descending the stairs. I couldn’t fix this. Mum smiled at me. Not a proper smile. Just someone forcing their mouth into a shape.
“See, Amber. They’ve gone. I did it.”
I’m getting used to living at The Haven. I have a new routine of runs along the coast and dunes, trying to clear my head of my past with Dad, and solitary meals in front of the TV. I know I’m killing time, that I need to think ahead, but this is the best I can manage right now. The Haven’s not exactly ‘home’ – I don’t really know what that would feel like any more – but I’m pleased to see it when I turn back up the lane. Maybe that’s the most I can ever expect.
The ginger-haired guy at the corner shop nods in recognition when he sees me now. Yesterday he commented on the weather. Today he tried to chat, asked where I was staying. I was non-specific. “Oh, you know, in one of the holiday cottages, belongs to my nan.” Trust no one. That was the Rule. He smiles but that doesn’t mean he’s a good guy. I should have kept it simple. Now I’ve invented a nan he might want to ask about. Stupid. I replay the conversation in my head, telling myself not to worry. I’m safe here. I should switch to another shop tomorrow – the one attached to the petrol station. It’s further away but a bored shift worker won’t ask me any questions.
I stick my shopping in the fridge and put the kettle on. I spread out the newspaper on the table, switch on the radio. I could carry on living here like this until I know Dad has given up and gone back to the States. I half regret ditching my phone. I could have called Sophie, sworn her to secrecy and asked if he’d come looking for me at school yet. Except I’m not that stupid. No contact is the safest way. But the longer I’m here, the harder it’ll be to pick up that life. And I don’t want to admit it, but if Dad finds out I go to Beechwood, it’ll never be safe to go back.
I work through the newspaper, checking all the columns, seeing if there’s a flicker of a news story on me. It’s been two days since the penny must have dropped with Mrs Maz; she will have called Julie. They’ve probably had lots of meetings. How long before they think I may be at risk and the police go public?
I don’t have a mother to do a sobbing TV appeal, flanked by a doting husband and a family liaison police officer. Maybe Julie would say something. “This is so out of character for Amber (LIE). Amber, if you’re out there, please get in touch. We’re all worried about you (LIE). You’re not in any trouble (LIE).”
Is being my substitute sobbing relative in Julie’s job description? Perhaps she’ll have media training, get a new dress from Rent-a-Tent on expenses.
I close the paper. I’m not in there.
My eyes flick up to the advent calendar. How many days have I been here? I didn’t open it at breakfast but there’s a new little picture on the bottom left – a gingerbread man with red icing buttons and a fixed smile.
I jump up and look quickly around the ground floor, my heart beating faster. There’s a scruffy bag and a green parka jacket in the back porch. The floorboards above me creak and someone flushes the toilet.
I head for t
he front door but, as I reach for the handle, a young man in sweatpants and a crumpled T-shirt is coming down the stairs.
“Hey, Goldilocks. Who’s been sleeping in my bed?” he says.
As he gets to the bottom step, I grab him by his shirt and force my weight against his chest, rolling him over on to the floor and pinning him down. I force his chin up with the flat of my palm, holding his head to the floor and sit astride him.
“Who the hell are you?” I ask.
“Ow. Get the fuck off me!” He’s got muddy-brown hair and seems my age or a little older. It’s hard to tell exactly – he’s got a scrappy beard and acne scars. He’s tall but thin – not strong enough to overpower me, not from this position. But I’m not taking any chances and I increase my force on his head. My mind’s whirring – I’ve seen him before but can’t place him.
“I asked you a question,” I say. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
“Josh,” he squeezes out. “I’m Josh Atkins. Just crashing here. Can you let me get up now?”
I stand slowly. The name rings a bell. I study his face as he sits cautiously on the stairs and rubs his chin. “That’s quite a set of moves you’ve got there. Are you Special Forces or something?” He smiles nervously at me, revealing a cracked front tooth. Not my handiwork.
“Wait, I know you. You’re –” he clicks his fingers while he thinks – “Amber! That’s it – Amber,” he says. “We overlapped for a few weeks at Phil and Sue’s. A couple of years ago probably. We called you Amber Warning. Not so you’d hear us. We didn’t have a death wish.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Me and Diggo. You decked him for looking at you funny over the Weetabix one morning. You weren’t one of the friendliest kids, putting it mildly. I got your necklace back off Diggo when he nicked it. Remember?”
The Rules Page 2